womanly, as she sat down by his mother’s side, and asked how she was, and stroked and fondled the thin, pale face, and petted the wasted hands which sought hers so gladly. Bee Belknap always did sick people good, and there was not a sick bed in all Rothsay, from the loftiest dwelling to the lowest tenant house, which she did not visit, making the rich ones more hopeful and cheerful from the effect of her strong, sympathetic nature, and dazzling, and bewildering, and gratifying the poor, with whom she often left some tangible proof of her presence. “You do me so much good; I am always better after one of your calls,” Mrs. Forrest said to her; and then, when Bee arose to go, and said, “May I take Everard with me for a short drive?” she answered readily: “Yes, do. I shall be glad for him to get the air.” And so Everard found himself seated at Beatrice’s side, and whirling along the road toward the village, for he wished to post his letter, and asked her to take him first to the post-office. “What would she say if she knew?” he thought, and it seemed to him as if the letter in his pocket must burn itself through and show her the name upon it. And then he fell to comparing the two girls with each other, and wondering why he should feel so much more natural, as if in his own atmosphere and on his good behavior, with Beatrice than he did with Josephine. Both were beautiful; both were piquant and bright, but still there was a difference. Beatrice never for a moment allowed him to forget that she was a lady and he a gentleman; never approached to anything like coarseness, and he would as soon have thought of insulting his mother as to have taken the slightest familiarity either by word or act with Bee. Josephine, on the contrary, allowed great latitude of word and action, and by her free-and-easy manner often led him into doing and saying things for which he would have blushed with shame had Beatrice, or even Rossie Hastings, been there to see and hear. Had Josephine lived in New York, or any other city, she would have added one more to that large class of people who laugh at our time-honored notions of propriety and true, pure womanhood, and on the broad platform of liberality and freedom sacrifice all that is sweetest and best in their sex. As a matter of course her influence over Everard was not good, and he had imbibed so much of the subtle poison that some of his sensibilities were blunted, and he was beginning to think that his early ideas were prudish and nonsensical. But there was something about Rosamond and Beatrice both which worked as an antidote to the poison, and as he rode along with the latter, and listened to her light, graceful badinage, in which there was nothing approaching to vulgarity, he was conscious of feeling more respect for himself than he had felt in many a day.